Could surveillance drones be a threat to national security?

By Stewart M. Powell

Updated 1:03 am, Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Photo: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI

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A model of an unmanned flying vehicle is perched outside the White House at a demonstration over the use of drones in June. Drones have become controversial in the U.S., with critics fearing for aircraft safety and loss of privacy.

A model of an unmanned flying vehicle is perched outside the White House at a demonstration over the use of drones in June. Drones have become controversial in the U.S., with critics fearing for aircraft safety

WASHINGTON — The explosion of unmanned aerial surveillance drones by the government is paying dividends for law enforcement authorities and yet exacerbating angst over terrorist attacks from within, air traffic safety and the risk of "eyes in the sky" over law-abiding citizens.

At least 106 agencies across the country have permission from the Federal Aviation Administration to operate 207 drones - numbers that are expected to increase as the FAA speeds approval of low-flying drones into the U.S. aviation system by 2015, as required by Congress.

Drones have been a game changer in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as providing real-time surveillance of the U.S.-Mexico border, but their proliferation has prompted concerns mainly over national security.

Last week, a suspect in Boston agreed to plead guilty to federal charges involving a plot to fly remote controlled aircraft loaded with explosives to collapse the dome of the U.S. Capitol and attack the Pentagon.

They accomplished this by tricking its onboard navigation system to stop accepting data from the Global Positioning System satellite network. Instead, they gave the drone counterfeit commands from a ground transmitter half a mile away.

"Spoofing a GPS receiver on a (unmanned aerial vehicle) is just another way of hijacking a plane," Humphreys told Fox News.

The so called "hijacking" was achieved with barely $1,000 in equipment and four years of software development that left the device completely unaware that it had been redirected.

McCaul, a former federal prosecutor, said the drones not only could be hijacked, loaded with explosives and flown against a target, but they also pose a safety issue for other aircraft.

Government-approved drones are supposed to weigh less than 25 pounds, fly only in daylight within 400 feet of the ground, and stay five miles away from the nearest airport.

"Now is the time to ensure these vulnerabilities are mitigated to protect our aviation system as the use of unmanned aerial systems continues to grow," he said.

Infringing on privacy

The plans to multiply drones also worry critics who question whether they infringe on the Fourth Amendment's protection of individual privacy.

"Our Founding Fathers had no idea that there would be remote-control drones with television monitors that can feed back live data instantaneously, but if they had, they would have made darn sure ... that these things were subject to the Fourth Amendment," Rep. Joe Barton, R-Ennis.

McCaul said he wants DHS to take the lead mapping governmentwide policies and guidelines for using the drones within the United States.

McDaniel, the Montgomery County sheriff, is expected to testify about the absence of unified guidelines and his county's attempts to get permission from the federal authorities to use a drone in an operation.

"Unfortunately, DHS seems either disinterested or unprepared to step up to the plate to address the proliferation of unmanned aerial systems in U.S. airspace, the potential threats they pose to our national security and the concerns of our citizens of how drones flying over our cities will be used," McCaul said.

A DHS spokesman said the FAA bears responsibility for the rules surrounding the integration of drones into U.S. airspace, not DHS.